HA February Auction 6 6

[vodou]

11 hours ago, tth2 said:

I generally like when people obsess about anatomical/compositional flaws and lose interest in pieces because of them, because I could care less.

Yes, except unlike yourself I couldn't care less

[Mmehdy]

14 hours ago, delekkerste said:

According to this critique, the #209 cover in this auction is the only one of the Frazetta Famous Funnies covers that doesn't have any glaring anatomical or compositional flaws. 

The more I look at this one, the more I appreciate it. 

I like it too....excellent

[adamstrange]

14 hours ago, delekkerste said:

According to this critique, the #209 cover in this auction is the only one of the Frazetta Famous Funnies covers that doesn't have any glaring anatomical or compositional flaws

From the article

" Sad to say, Frazetta's drawings here are not top-notch. "

Talk about missing the forest for the trees.

[adamstrange]

The anatomy of Buck's left leg on the 209 is dubious.  I don't see it as in any way realistically superior to the other pieces.

Edited December 22, 2018 by adamstrange

[artcollector9]

The referenced critique of the Frazetta Famous Funnies covers misses the point of our hobby entirely-- his comments were laughable really (i.e. Wilma's muscles are too well defined in this one, etc.) HA!!  Frazetta would often blur portions of the paintings he did to lead our eye to what is important. Is that a defect to the author, too?

Frazetta is about animal  energy  more than precision, though he's often very precise. Frank's woman and men are often caricatures of real people, exaggerated for effect; It's like saying Jimmy Page played 4 wrong notes in his Stairway to Heaven solo on July12, 1977-- and missing the three hours of sheer energy and talent and bravado that surrounded them...in context it works.

Page isn't Bach and Frazetta isn't DaVinci. It's rock and roll and comic covers. 

Besides, who wants to pick apart Kirby's anatomy, or Millers? I hate this type of conversation. 

The Frazetta covers are so F*****g cool I'd be thrilled to own any of them... Wilma's musculature and all!!

Whoever buys this cover will be very fortunate indeed... the are all among the very best dynamic covers in our hobby I think. 

[delekkerste]

5 hours ago, artcollector9 said:

The referenced critique of the Frazetta Famous Funnies covers misses the point of our hobby entirely-- his comments were laughable really (i.e. Wilma's muscles are too well defined in this one, etc.) HA!!  Frazetta would often blur portions of the paintings he did to lead our eye to what is important. Is that a defect to the author, too?

Frazetta is about animal  energy  more than precision, though he's often very precise. Frank's woman and men are often caricatures of real people, exaggerated for effect; It's like saying Jimmy Page played 4 wrong notes in his Stairway to Heaven solo on July12, 1977-- and missing the three hours of sheer energy and talent and bravado that surrounded them...in context it works.

Page isn't Bach and Frazetta isn't DaVinci. It's rock and roll and comic covers. 

Besides, who wants to pick apart Kirby's anatomy, or Millers? I hate this type of conversation. 

The Frazetta covers are so F*****g cool I'd be thrilled to own any of them... Wilma's musculature and all!!

Whoever buys this cover will be very fortunate indeed... the are all among the very best dynamic covers in our hobby I think. 

Rob, I agree with you in spirit - these covers are among the most iconic images in our hobby, at least for those of a certain age and disposition towards a broad understanding and appreciation of the history of the medium, and are not worth dismissing over issues of technical criticism.  That said, I do consider the flaws that the author notes to be defects.  I think the proof of this is that, at least off the top of my head, I am struggling to think of similar wonkiness of the anatomical or compositional variety in Frazetta's later pen & ink work (if it's there, it's nowhere near as prevalent as on the short run of covers here), which suggests to me that these were not intentional technique decisions meant to lead our eye in a certain way, but, rather, mistakes by an artist who had yet to reach the heights he would later scale.   

I actually think that the author's critique of Wilma's musculature is off the mark for another reason - it is not critical enough!!  I mean, the problem is NOT with her overdeveloped musculature, but, rather, the fact that she looks like Benjamin Button's sister!!  I mean, she looks like an 80 year old in a 13 year old body.  Not to mention that she looks like she's about 4'2" and Buck is about 4'6".  And what in the name of all that is holy are they wearing??   

And yet, despite what, to me, are glaring flaws, that might still be the cover that I'd choose to own out of the run if I had my pick, simply because it is so well-known and iconic!  Plus the fact that there's a lot of black ink on the page, and I know that this one is really going to "pop" displayed on the wall compared to some of the sparser examples. 

Edited December 23, 2018 by delekkerste

[Andahaion]

27 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

at least for those of a certain age and disposition towards a broad understanding and appreciation of the history of the medium

Thank you for reminding me that I'd be out of my place to comment, or have any thoughts on this piece of "art".  You really are something..."elitist" and "arrogant" come to mind.  

Edit:  You may as well put me on ignore cause I've had about enough of your ageist attitude.

Edited December 23, 2018 by Andahaion
Additional clarification

[delekkerste]

22 hours ago, tth2 said:

I generally like when people obsess about anatomical/compositional flaws and lose interest in pieces because of them, because I could care less. 

Well, I get that if one collects for nostalgia or other reasons (e.g., first appearance collecting) unrelated to artistic quality/craft, that anatomical/compositional flaws might not matter so much.  I mean, if you like Herb Trimpe Hulk, you like Herb Trimpe Hulk, and if Hulk's head is too big or small or whatever, it's not a big deal. 

But, is it really so easy to dismiss such flaws when artistic quality IS what you're going for?  I mean, if I'm buying a Wrightson Frankenstein plate, there better not be anything in the piece that draws my eye away from appreciating the pure brilliance of his craft.  Or how about that Alex Raymond Flash Gordon Sunday with the disembodied hip/leg that was pointed out in this Forum when it was auctioned at Heritage?  If I was in the market for such an example, that one would have been a big NFW.  I mean, imagine hanging that one up on your wall and explaining to a houseguest how brilliant an artist Alex Raymond was, only to have he or she ask how such a brilliant artist could have completely botched the anatomy that badly.  

There is even a Dave Stevens piece, which I will decline to identify (DON'T EVEN ASK), where he botched the main character's face so badly it's not funny.  It's actually a piece that was offered to me many years ago.  I got a scan of it and it just looked off to me.  So, I asked my wife, "Hey, does this look wrong to you?"  And she said, "Yes, and here's how you can tell.  Cover half of the character's face with your hand.  Now, based on the visible half, imagine what the other half should look like when you uncover it.  Now uncover it."  HOLY MOTHER OF GOD - instead of the other half of the face looking as it should, Stevens had drawn this character's face like he or she had been in-bred for 8 generations.  I mean, unredeemably bad.  

There are some things I can overlook, but some things I just can't.  When a piece is primarily driven by aesthetics, it gets harder for me to overlook glaring artistic flaws.  

 

[delekkerste]

12 minutes ago, Andahaion said:

Thank you for reminding me that I'd be out of my place to comment, or have any thoughts on this piece of "art".  You really are something..."elitist" and "arrogant" come to mind.  

Edit:  You may as well put me on ignore cause I've had about enough of your ageist attitude.

I was actually thinking that it's the cohort of collectors that is slightly older than the collectors around my age for whom these covers are the most meaningful and who have the most appreciation for it.  As I tried to convey in the podcast - too bad you shut it off after the first 10 minutes - it's not that younger collectors are lazy and/or not intellectually curious, it's that the Gen X and Baby Boomer collectors spent all those years in an analog world before content availability went exponential.  And, as such, they had years to absorb and discover things that, today, are just among the millions of things that people both young and old simply have no time for.  People can't even keep up with what's coming out now, let alone what came out in the past.  

There was a time when it was weird that there were people who hadn't read certain classic comic book runs or seen what are now classic movies.  As the years progress, it will not seem weird at all for someone not to have seen The Godfather or Star Wars simply because there is now an almost infinite amount of available content to absorb in the same fixed span of time.  No one can seriously expect all the younger collectors to have all read or gone back and studied all the mainstream content from before they were born, let alone niche things like Famous Funnies.  Empirically, a 55-year old in this hobby is far more likely to have spent more time fixated on Frazetta Famous Funnies covers than a 25 or 35-year old.  That's just reality. 

[tth2]

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

Or how about that Alex Raymond Flash Gordon Sunday with the disembodied hip/leg that was pointed out in this Forum when it was auctioned at Heritage?  If I was in the market for such an example, that one would have been a big NFW.  I mean, imagine hanging that one up on your wall and explaining to a houseguest how brilliant an artist Alex Raymond was, only to have he or she ask how such a brilliant artist could have completely botched the anatomy that badly.  

 

That didn't, and wouldn't, bother me in the least.  It's such a trivial part of the total piece, so very unlike the Dave Stevens piece you mention.

And if some guest immediately started fixating on it and criticizing it, that would be the last time he/she would be a guest in my home! 

Anyways, I hope all other Frazetta collectors are similarly OCD about inaccurate anatomy and say NFW to other works that come on the market.

[ESeffinga]

I’m with Gene on this one. And something like that Raymond leg totally ruins an otherwise brilliant piece, for me.

I couldn’t own it. In fact , I’ve sold plenty of works that I’ve “outgrown” over the years. Where unintentional “flaws” in anatomy, composition, or even the i sophistication of technique ends up leaving me feeling flat at best or put off entirely because my attention goes there rather than to those feelings of enjoyment that were there when I bought it.

Anything with obvious issues, I can’t even anymore...

[Rick2you2]

8 hours ago, delekkerste said:

I was actually thinking that it's the cohort of collectors that is slightly older than the collectors around my age for whom these covers are the most meaningful and who have the most appreciation for it.  As I tried to convey in the podcast - too bad you shut it off after the first 10 minutes - it's not that younger collectors are lazy and/or not intellectually curious, it's that the Gen X and Baby Boomer collectors spent all those years in an analog world before content availability went exponential.  And, as such, they had years to absorb and discover things that, today, are just among the millions of things that people both young and old simply have no time for.  People can't even keep up with what's coming out now, let alone what came out in the past.  

There was a time when it was weird that there were people who hadn't read certain classic comic book runs or seen what are now classic movies.  As the years progress, it will not seem weird at all for someone not to have seen The Godfather or Star Wars simply because there is now an almost infinite amount of available content to absorb in the same fixed span of time.  No one can seriously expect all the younger collectors to have all read or gone back and studied all the mainstream content from before they were born, let alone niche things like Famous Funnies.  Empirically, a 55-year old in this hobby is far more likely to have spent more time fixated on Frazetta Famous Funnies covers than a 25 or 35-year old.  That's just reality. 

I think it has to depend on the piece. Most OA is inspirational in the sense that very few people have the physiques of superheroes. To the extent the artist is drawing a piece where the distortion is part of his/her vision, it’s okay. What tends to bother me more is when a person’s pose is unnatural, like a bent leg that doesn’t really bend that way, or a woman with long hair resting on her hair (which would tug at it). None of thse Frazetta covers could be called realistic. People don’t stand on spaceships pointing guns (assuming there were spaceships). The lack of atmosphere would cause them to explode. So I can accept the errors if they further the vision.

[pemart1966]

20 hours ago, vodou said:

Yes, except unlike yourself I couldn't care less

  

[delekkerste]

9 hours ago, tth2 said:

That didn't, and wouldn't, bother me in the least.  It's such a trivial part of the total piece

You and I differ in our interpretation of "trivial".  

And, by extension, "Minor restoration" according to Tim:

Edited December 23, 2018 by delekkerste

[artcollector9]

Good points Gene. I am less critical of technique these days. Looking at the art as the cover of a 10 cent comic, I see wonder! I suppose if I were spending $100-500K on a piece of art I'd be more critical? I've spent that this year and I was buying other things than technique.  I rarely buy comic art for  illustrative perfection... White out doesn't bother me. This is production art. I go for overall impact. As I said, a critical analysis of Jack Kirby's anatomy would suggest he wasn't very good. The reality is that he was the master. I have redefined what makes great comic art in my mind these last few years. I think I look at art more at a distance now, and not so close up. 

 I agree that FF covers are better known and appeal to Boomers, not younger collectors. Clearly the possibly half million dollar price tag will limit buyers to those who can afford such nostalgic luxury, usually older guys. So the lack of appeal or importance to a 26 year old is of no consequence to the seller, at least!

Edited December 23, 2018 by artcollector9

[vodou]

Who's turning away two left hands FF#3 cover art?

Right. Didn't think so

[vodou]

32 minutes ago, delekkerste said:

You and I differ in our interpretation of "trivial".  

It's not awesome but hardly ruins the piece for me.

I'd buy if all the other relevant factors were in good standing (mostly my disposable and willingness that quarter!)

[jjonahjameson11]

21 hours ago, Mmehdy said:

I like it too....excellent

As much as I enjoy artwork by the likes of Adams, Raymond, Williamson, Fraz, et al., when folks start mentioning $500K estimates, three things immediately come to mind:

1.  It’s a Buck Rogers covers, and those that can afford it and actually care about Buck are dwindling in number with each passing year 

2. For that kind of dough, I’d MUCH rather have the ASM 100 cover, for numerous reasons!

3.  For that kind of dough, I’d MUCH rather have a Fraz painting

[batman_fan]

1 hour ago, delekkerste said:

You and I differ in our interpretation of "trivial".  

 

And, by extension, "Minor restoration" according to Tim:

Yes, the leg is a bit jacked in terms of placement but the linework is just plan spectacular 

[delekkerste]

1 hour ago, vodou said:

Who's turning away two left hands FF#3 cover art?

 

Right. Didn't think so

Maybe not, but, I wouldn't touch the Buscema FF #126 cover with a 40-ft. pole. I mean, look at the Thing's left shoulder/arm/hand. I mean, there is just no way that I could ever look past that (the rest of the Thing is drawn pretty terribly as well, for that matter). Makes Rob Liefeld's puffy chest Captain America look like Michelangelo by comparison.